Saturday, 22 February 2014

A documentary I
recently watched encouraged me that although I can’t do anything about the
environment I have come into, I can help the shift to change the future of
it. Good intentions and positive thoughts will not help this shift.
What is needed at this point is people who action their concern for
others.

A red pill-blue
pill situation lies before us. I can wax lyrical for decades about why we
should all take up the challenge of ethical and responsible consumption, but if
I don’t make positive consumer choices I am merely a fountain of admirable but
empty ideals. We all begin in the same mess, challenged by the
recognition of our consumer selfishness, unsure how to escape it. It is
our response that is the challenge. The blue pill: Keep calm and carry
on. The red pill: Face reality and choose change. Begin to move,
lean into the challenge, leave slactivism and ignorance behind, embracing
social consciousness. Pair the red pill with action and you will begin to
find an ease in momentum. One decision follows another with increasing
velocity, and yesterday’s challenge becomes today’s strength. This
decision to carry the responsibility that awaits us is the catalyst to a
greatly rewarding journey. A journey filled with discovery, in which both
beauty and corruption are overturned in equal measures.

Since accepting
the red pill I have discovered the truth about consumer satisfaction.
Consuming products that have cut a swathe of social and environmental destruction
on their way to my ownership, results in satisfaction for a moment.
Choosing to purchase sustainable and ethically produced goods, results in the
deep and prolonged satisfaction of knowing that my lifestyle enhances someone
else’s. This satisfaction of knowing that I am becoming less of the
problem and more of the solution outweighs any extra effort I have invested in
finding the right product every time. Alongside my enjoyment of feeling
like I am making an ever clichéd ‘difference in this world’, I find myself with
less useless crap and more money. Win-win! I chose and continue to choose
the red pill because I see through blue’s shallow deception.

Many of you
have asked for a genesis point, so at the risk of over simplifying the global
issue of compulsive consumption, I hand you these ideas as encouragement that
guilt free consumption is immediately practicable:

Buy second hand! Surely it can’t be
that easy? In buying products second hand you refuse to support the
companies who use exploitation to make a profit, instead supporting local
businesses or charities. You also reduce, reuse and recycle items
that would otherwise go into the landfill and you get a bargain to boot.
It’s cheaper, it’s great for the planet, and it’s guilt free.

Buy local or grow your own food.
Buy things when they are in season and preserve them for later, or
just go without when they are out of season. This supports your
nation’s economy, and (depending on where you live) can almost ensure that
the workers who were involved in the production process were not
exploited. Many imported foods have a brutal backstory when you look
into the production practices associated with them, so by choosing to
search out local producers and do some brand research, you can often find
products that are more ethically produced and prepared.

Buy from producers who have received an
independent certification such as the Fairtrade International
certification (FLO CERT) to give your money the best chance possible of
getting right back down the production line. Please don’t just
accept a company’s claim that their products are ethically produced
without asking some further questions. This is where google comes in
handy.

Talk to local companies that you are
considering buying from about the steps they have taken to ensure that
their product is made in a way that reduces impact on both the environment
and vulnerable people groups in their supply chain. Beware of
companies who strongly promote their reduced negative environmental impact
but neglect to mention anything about their humanitarian responsibilities.

Buy less! Take control of your
spending and learn how much you can live without.

So which will
it be? Remain in a reality fabricated by companies who aspire to
manipulate you into relationship with them, or unplug from the illusion and
carry your responsibility?

About the Project:

The narrow path project is a product of a continuing challenge I feel to move my passion for ethical production from a state of solitary inactivism to solidarity in activism.

It's for sharing resources with like-minded people and inspiring change through advocacy and awareness.

It's about becoming less of the problem and increasingly and determinedly more of the solution.

About Me:

My name is Erin. I am young, female and from a rural area. In many parts of the world, these combined factors result in a lifetime of forced labour. I am the same as those young women, but I am also different. I have money and money equals choice, opportunity and influence.

I am connected to these young women in my daily consumer choices. With every financial transaction I choose to support or boycott the companies that exploit them. This is my choice, my opportunity, my influence. My expenditure betrays the hidden values of my heart.

For several years I have been researching production practices, seeking out pathways that allow me to navigate the wasteland of compulsive consumption in increasingly ethical ways. The paths I have discovered are narrow and often winding. I travel them not in gracious leaps, but in a stumbling shuffle leading justiceward.